Tuesday, August 5, 2014
World War I Began 100 Years Ago, But Its Impact Is Still Felt Today
Prince Harry and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge walked today through a blood-red sea of ceramic poppies spreading from the base of the walls of the Tower of London. The installation, called "Blood Swept Lands And Seas Of Red," is made up of 120,000 ceramic poppies. More will be added in the coming months until there are 888,246 -- one for each of the British and Commonwealth soldiers killed in World War I. The event was part of the year-long commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the war's start. Harry, William and Kate "planted" some of the poppies in the dry moat surrounding the Tower. ~~~~~ World War I, also known as the Great War, which began in the Balkans in late July 1914, had many complicated causes. Among these were political, territorial and economic conflicts between the great European powers (Britain, France, Germany and Russia) in the four decades leading up to the war. Additional causes were increasing militarism, a complex web of international alliances that always included mutual defense clauses, imperialism, and nationalism. The immediate origins of the war, however, lay in the decisions taken by statesmen and generals during the July Crisis of 1914 caused by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by Gavrilo Princip, an ethnic Serb and Yugoslav nationalist. The European Great Powers, one after another, declared war when it became impossible to settle territorial issues in Serbia and the Balkans. As each country declared war on an adversary, the mutual defense clauses kicked in until finally the whole world was at war -- divided into two huge hostile camps. ~~~~~ The longest remaining human memory of World War I will probably be the casualties. World War I was the most deadly war ever fought by mankind. The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was over 37 million. There were over 16 million deaths and 20 million wounded, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. The total number of deaths includes about 10 million military personnel and about 7 million civilians. The Entente Powers (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million military personnel while the Central Powers lost about 4 million. At least 2 million died from diseases and 6 million went missing, presumed dead. About two-thirds of military deaths in World War I were in battle, unlike the conflicts that took place in the 19th century when the majority of deaths were caused by disease. But, disease, including the Spanish flu and deaths while held as prisoners of war, still caused about one third of total military deaths for all belligerents. These are the generally accepted casualty figures, but estimates of casualty numbers for World War I vary greatly. Estimates of total deaths range from 9 million to over 15 million. First World War civilian deaths are difficult to estimate, but the generally accepted figure of noncombatant deaths is 6.5 million, caused by war related privations that are often omitted from other compilations of World War I casualties. The war led to malnutrition and disease because of disruptions of trade resulting in food shortages. The mobilization for the war took away millions of men from the agricultural labor force cutting food production. And, World War I also led to other regional conflicts leading to civilian deaths in the Ottoman Empire, including the Armenian Genocide, Assyrian Genocide and Greek Genocide. But, World War I casualty figures do not include deaths during the Turkish War of Independence and the Russian Civil War. ~~~~~ Dear readers, the commemoration of World War I will continue during this year. Try to find time to read about it on the Internet or watch special TV programs about it. This will be valuable, not only to be better informed about how we got to be the world in which we live today, but to see where we may be headed. You will also better understand why today's world is also divided into large groups of countries, more or less according to the lines drawn politically and territorially at the end of World War I. You will understand much better why the Middle East and eastern Europe are what they are today. World War I may have started 100 years ago in 1914, but its impact resonates all over the world today in 2014.
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“If I am asked what we are fighting for, I can reply in two sentences. In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation … an obligation of honor which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated. I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed in defiance of international good faith at the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.”
ReplyDeletePremier Asquith, Statement, to House of Commons, Declaration of War with Germany, August 4, 1914.
The completely unimaginable number of casualties is almost inconceivable. The ratio percentage of the world’s populations then would be sky rocketing. If Hell is the impossibility of reason, then WW I was attempt of Satan to relocate his domain in Europe.
ReplyDeleteIt nearly staggers the mind to understand how peace and prosperity ever was common place again!
In today’s civilized warfare the percentages of death is much lower simply because of our filed medical units and the quick evacuation of the wounded to full blown field hospitals.
ReplyDeleteCountries brag about how many bent & broken bodies we save to rehabilitate them –rehabilitation? Sometimes when I see the effects of these extraordinary lifesaving efforts I wonder if our compassion is not sorrowfully miss placed by personal guilt.
Although one of the causes for the WWI numbers being so out of line is we simply couldn’t “save” those men and women who perished instead of being rehabilitated to a life of -_____ (you fill in the blank). Military medical people rave about their ability to save – sometimes I wonder if we being all that kind?
A war that was called by many a “Family Affair” got started by Austro-Hungarian determination to impose its will upon the Balkans; a German desire for greater power and international influence, which sparked a naval arms race with Britain, who responded by building new and greater warships, the Dreadnought; a French desire for revenge against Germany following disastrous defeat in 1871; Russia's anxiety to restore some semblance of national prestige after almost a decade of civil strife and a battering at the hands of the Japanese military in 1905.
ReplyDeleteAnd when the dust had settled in 1918 Europe would never be the same again.
"The first casualty of war is innocence."
ReplyDeleteWorld War I and the more than 100,000 American war dead gained nothing more for the United States than a post-war depression. While some Europeans could at least claim to be fighting against physical invasion, the Americans fought for nothing except to defend some authoritarian regimes from some other authoritarian regimes. The idea that the war had something to do with “democracy” was obviously untrue even at the time, and in retrospect, the claim is all the more ridiculous given the rise of totalitarianism, which was fostered by the Treaty of Versailles.
ReplyDeleteIn the United States, and of course also throughout Europe, the war led to paranoia and political repression rarely seen during the previous century, and in the United States, the Wilson administration’s “anti-sedition” efforts led to a large-scale destruction of basic American liberties unmatched even by the Alien and Sedition acts of the eighteenth century.
The world economy experienced an era of peace and growth that, in the aftermath of the carnage of World War I, came to be remembered as a golden age.
As much as none of us wish to acknowledge this thought, the world’s economies are still war based economies that for one reason or another find an excuse to use up their dated technologies, their stockpiles of ammunition & mechanics of used to fighta war to immediately post war get replaced by wars new technologies of destruction and economic growth.
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